Programming the Mind through Power of Beliefs

To understand the mind, we can divide it into two parts: conscious mind and sub-conscious mind. We use conscious mind when we knowingly think or do something. Some functions, like working of our heart, is not under the control of conscious mind. It is the power of the sub-conscious mind that makes our heart beat about 72 times per minute regularly for up to 100 years.

Psychologists have found that we can consciously be aware of only 7+ 2 items at a time. But our sub-conscious mind can be aware of a large number of items at any instant of time. For example, at any time, the sub-conscious is aware of many body functions including blood pressure, heart beats, body temperature, chemical balances, blood flow, taking care of emergencies, etc.

The subconscious mind is not under our conscious control. The sub-conscious mind functions on the basis of information stored in it. This is the basis of mind programming. Mind programming means that if we can put information in a person's subconscious mind, then we can modify the person's behavior.

The main difficulty is that the conscious mind does not let us put information in the sub-conscious mind. Actually the conscious mind analyses the information, and discards all that it considers false or non-useful. For example, someone who is not confident says to himself "I am confident". The conscious mind analyses this sentence and decides that this sentence is false and does not put this information into the sub-conscious mind.

Power of beliefs
A belief is an idea that we accept to be true. It can be a fact, a guiding principle, an opinion, or a faith in someone or something. We can have faith in our teacher or doctor, in the value of being honest or good, in the value of exercise for good health, in our ability to succeed, or in the value of reading newspapers, magazines, and books. A belief can be conscious or subconscious. Conscious beliefs mean that we know that we believe something. Subconscious belief means that we do not even know that we believe something. An example of subconscious belief is that we accept to be true what we see on the TV, what we hear on the radio, and what we read in the newspapers. Beliefs are powerful. Here are a few examples that illustrate how beliefs affect performance.

Elephant and rope
When an elephant is a small baby elephant, it is tied with a big strong chain. It tries hard to escape from the chain, but it can not escape. As the elephant grows, the trainers replace the big strong chain by small rope. Surprisingly, the elephant still remains tied to the rope. It probably thinks "There is no point trying ... I know ... I have tried before and failed ... I am tied with the rope ... I can not escape".

How some new world records were created
In the first half of this century, athletes and trainers believed that human body could not run a mile in 4 minutes. Then, in May 1954, one runner ran a mile in less than 4 minutes. In June of the same year, another person did it again. Since then, hundreds of people have run a mile in less than 4 minutes. It shows that the belief in impossibility was in the mind only.

In weight-lifting it was believed that 500 pounds was the limit for the human body. Many could lift 499, but none 500 or more. Then the trainers fooled a Soviet weight lifter Vasily Alexeev; the actual weight was 501.5 pounds, but they told it was only 499, and Vasily Alexeev lifted the weight. Once the belief was broken, many other weight-lifters were able to lift more than 500 pounds.

The magic of placebo
The magic of sugar tablets (also called the placebo effect) is well known to the medical science. In some placebo studies, patients were given sugar tablets that contained no medicine. But they were told that they were getting some powerful medicine. Many people got cured by sugar tablets. They got well just by believing that they were getting some real good medicines. The example shows how the mind affects the body.

In one study, educational researchers divided students of equal IQ into two groups. Teachers were told that one group had a high IQ and should get high marks. The other had a low IQ and should get low marks. What do you think was the result? The group which was told to fetch high marks really got higher marks than the other group.

In any sphere of life, realizing the power of belief is probably one of the most unknown and under-exploited human enterprise.

Does God select you for ...?

Arthur Ashe, the legendary Wimbledon player was dying of AIDS which he got due to infected blood he received during a heart surgery in 1983. From world over, he received letters from his fans, one of which conveyed: "Why does God have to select you for such a bad disease"? To this Arthur Ashe replied: "The world over --
50 million children start playing tennis,

5 million learn to play tennis,

500,000 learn professional tennis,

50,000 come to the circuit,

5000 reach the grand slam,

50 reach Wimbledon,

4 to semi final,

2 to the finals,

when I was holding a cup I never asked God 'Why me?'.

And today in pain I should not be asking God 'Why me?' "

7 Lessons from Sam Bahadur by V. K. Madhav Mohan

For corporate leaders aspiring to make the crossover from good to great, the Field Marshal’s life can be the ultimate inspiration.



Field Marshal Sam Hormusji Framji Jamshedji Manekshaw has passed (on 27th June, 2008) into the pantheon of immortal Indian heroes and all-time great military leaders. The saga of his life will continue to motivate and inspire untold generations of Indians. In a country that is hamstrung by a predominance of pseudo-leaders, he shone like a diamond. What can we learn from the 94 years of brilliance, joie de vivre and selfless service that Sam Bahadur gave us?

Raw Courage:
First, of course, is that any aspiring leader needs raw courage in abundance. Sam Bahadur was wounded critically twice and highly decorated for gallantry while personally leading troops in combat. Raw physical courage he possessed in full and overflowing measure, but does a CEO need it?

Of course, he does, because natural disasters, terrorist strikes, industrial accidents and all kinds of emergencies are just a heartbeat away. In such an eventuality will the CEO be the first to run or first to respond? His response could make or break his organisation and his own future. Even more important is courage of the moral kind that Sam demonstrated. The courage of conviction, the courage to do that which is right, the courage to stand up to political pressure: these are of utmost importance in defining and demonstrating leadership. Buckling under pressure and deviating from the path of organisational welfare are options that true corporate leaders don’t have if they are to retain loyalty and followership.

Spotting & Deploying Talent:
The second lesson is to build an ability to spot and deploy talent. Identifying the right person for a particular assignment, a person with the skill set and mindscape that guarantees delivery can spell the difference between success and failure. This can only come about if the CEO has an intimate knowledge of the capabilities of his people. For that he has to develop close relationships across the organisation. Many observers are unanimous that the real genius of Sam lay in his choice of field commanders. That is a skill that every CEO must build.

Planning & Faith:
The third lesson is to plan to the nth degree and simultaneously invest consummate faith in your people. Sam practised this expertly throughout his career. The most visible example was Sam’s planning for the East Pakistan (Bangladesh liberation) campaign when he handpicked the team to lead it and backed them to the hilt. CEOs need to drive detailed and meticulous planning and then support the team totally; every member should know for certain that if things go wrong the CEO will back them fully.

Seek The Best Ideas:
The fourth lesson is to seek the best ideas wherever they may emanate. The best ideas may be embedded deep within the organisation. The CEO’s job is to ferret them out and implement them. Sam seemed to excel in this; he would never pull rank when his juniors tried to tell him something that was very different from his own ideas. Debate and discussions are used by all great leaders to clarify their own thought process to facilitate decision making.

Strategy-Tactics balance:
The fifth lesson is to balance strategy with tactics. Organisation building and tactical plans must be synchronised. While deferring the East Pakistan campaign by three months despite political pressure, Sam assembled his assault force and supplied them with strategic guidance while demanding operational targets and execution plans from the field commanders. This balance is what CEOs need. While strategic initiatives are important, grassroots implementation is equally vital. I fear that the acquisitions that corporate India has so aggressively concluded in the last 18 months will come to naught with non-achievement of sales and profitability targets in the near future.

Direct Communication:
The sixth lesson that Sam teaches us is the importance of simple, direct and, many times, earthy communication. Known for his wit and informality, he could get straight to the heart of the matter. CEOs must imbibe this in full measure. Many times corporate communications and discussions are mired in obfuscation and jargonising. The principle of, “say what you will do and then do what you said” is the bedrock of credibility.

Unshakeable Principles:
The seventh lesson Sam leaves us with is the importance of unshakeable principles. In a famous incident he is reported to have given only two options to an officer found prima facie involved in corruption: either resign or shoot yourself. Sam’s greatness lay in living the principles with wit, wisdom and humility. CEO’s can learn to dilute their self-importance while sticking to the values necessary for leadership. The leadership legacy of Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw is formidable. It needs deep study and research by the premier business schools in India following which it can be integrated into management curricula. The true tribute we can pay to this great son of India is to universalise the principles by which he lived.

For the original article, click

http://thelonelyceo.blogspot.com/

Power of Failure

The following is the magical text of Commencement Address, "The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination,” by J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association in June 2008.

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I’ve experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world’s best-educated Harry Potter convention.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement. Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination. These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me. I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor. I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure. At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment. However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default. Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London. There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind. I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone. Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before. Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places. Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid. What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I’ve used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.I wish you all very good lives.

Thank you very much.

To access the original article, click
http://harvardmagazine.com/go/jkrowling.html

Lessons of Silence: What the deaf can teach us about listening and making ourselves heard.

During the last decade of my professional life, I have tried hard to improve my listening skills, and in the process got to read many articles on the subject. But the one reproduced below is just superb, may be God Sent. The article based on the results of an experiment on communication skills with deaf people is published in strategy+business by Bruno Kahne and can be accessed at www.strategy-business.com/media/file/leading_ideas-20080522.pdf

In December 2006, while developing a leadership program for Airbus, I met an executive whose youngest son was born without hearing. Through this man and www.WebSourd.org, a French-language Web site that he founded to offer online sign-language translation services, I became familiar with the silent culture of deaf people. As I immersed myself in their visual, intensely expressive language, I realized that through their “handicap,” deaf people had developed certain communication skills more thoroughly than most hearing people, which made them uncommonly effective at getting their point across.

Thus a radical experiment was born: to work with deaf people as communication consultants for our corporate clients. The idea was not to teach our clients sign language - although some of our deaf trainers remain convinced that such training would resolve many problems - but to help them adopt communication skills from the deaf world that would make them better colleagues and managers. When they interact with one another, deaf people act in ways that let them communicate more rapidly and accurately than hearing people. Some of these behaviors are simple and obvious, but it’s remarkable how often hearing people do the opposite. To improve your “hearing,” consider some of these lessons from our experiences and training sessions.

1. Look people in the eye. In my initial meetings with deaf people, I used an interpreter. That in itself was a strange situation: looking at one person while listening to another. During one conversation I was struck by something a young woman had “said,” so I started to write it down in my notebook. Suddenly the atmosphere changed. I looked up and saw the woman frowning angrily at me. I asked her, through the interpreter, what was wrong. “You are being very rude,” she replied. “Why?” I asked, totally lost. “Because you cut the conversation,” she responded, explaining that when I stopped looking her in the eye, I also stopped our communication. “I apologize,” I said. “But what you just said was interesting, and I didn’t want to forget it.” Her answer was quick and sharp: “No, Bruno. You don’t write to remember. You don’t remember because you write!” I was incredulous. “What are you saying? That because you didn’t take any notes during this meeting, you will be able to remember everything?” Calmly, she answered, “That’s correct. Since I don’t write, I’m more present in the interaction and I can concentrate more. And the more I do it, the better I remember.” Ten days later, when I met this young woman again, she was able to recall not just everything we covered in the original meeting, but also the color of my shirt, tie, and even how many chairs were in the room. From that day on, I stopped taking notes during meetings and interviews. And indeed, since then, my memory has improved.

2. Don’t interrupt. Deaf people follow a very strict protocol: Only one person signs at a time. If another person tries to interrupt, the others in the group shake their right hands to signify to the “interrupter” that he or she must wait until the “speaker” is finished. This approach to communication, which at first feels slow, is in fact extremely efficient because there is much less misunderstanding to explain or recover from. Consensus and agreement are arrived at more quickly than during a typical raucous overlapping conversation. By communicating sequentially, a deaf person ensures that he or she first understands the other speaker before trying to be understood. Try this the next time you’re in a business discussion, ideally one in which there’s some tension - let the other person finish what he or she has to say, then silently count to three before responding. You will find that, in the long term, slower is faster.

3. Say what you mean, as simply as possible. Deaf people are direct. This is why people with hearing sometimes perceive sign language as blunt to the point of rudeness. It’s not. It’s just explicit. The deaf tend not to hide behind soft language, struggling to find the most diplomatic wording and hoping that the listener will be able to discern what they “really” mean. And indeed, deaf people reveal not only their thoughts, but also their feelings, both positive and negative, more clearly than hearing people do, as they express them with their whole bodies. Similarly, the deaf are often far better than hearing people at finding the most economical way to convey their message. For example, I wanted to tell one of our deaf trainers about my last trip to India. I didn’t know the sign for India, so I was forced to improvise. I tried drawing maps with my finger, and then tried to come up with gestures for cultural symbols. Suddenly, I saw a light in his eyes. With a big smile, he took his index finger and placed it between his eyebrows - his sign for the familiar Bindi adornment - asking me to confirm. So simple! I later learned that the sign for Belgium, my native country, is to wipe imaginary beer froth from the lips with the right thumb.

4. When you don’t understand something, ask. Because sign language is a constantly evolving language - and because its evolution isn’t slowed down by the need to develop a written counterpart - new signs emerge all the time. Consequently, even if they use the same national sign language, two deaf people from different parts of the same country will use words unique to their region. Aware of this, deaf people feel completely at ease saying “I don’t know” or “I don’t understand.” Those of us with hearing aren’t nearly as willing to admit confusion or lack of comprehension.We often sit silently in meetings while our colleagues use acronyms or technical jargon we don’t grasp because we think asking for clarification is a sign of weakness. Ironically, we’d rather leave a meeting clueless than risk being perceived as stupid. Many meetings conclude with some version of “So, do we all agree?” which discourages anyone from saying no or asking questions. A better approach, which encourages people to speak up, is to ask each person, individually, whether he or she would like clarification about anything that has been discussed.

5. Stay focused. We all know how difficult it is to concentrate on only one thing when the phone is ringing, e-mail alerts are pouring in, and a colleague has just stopped by. The deaf cut themselves off from any distractions, they don’t multitask, and they focus their attention entirely on the conversation. In a recent meeting with some deaf people, I presented a new workflow chart. I gave them each a document outlining the program, planning to elaborate on it as they read the material. One of them stopped me and asked if they should first read, then discuss or first discuss, then read. Doing both at the same time was impossible to them - and of course, despite what we try to do, it is also impossible for us. These are just a few of the many communications behaviors we can learn from deaf people. But overall, the most inspiring thing about communication with deaf people - and the behavior most worth emulating - is their incredibly strong desire to exchange information efficiently and without adornment. This desire is so strong, in fact, that it often highlights how feeble, misguided, and wishy-washy our own attempts at dialogue are by comparison. It turns out that the people who are truly handicapped in communication are not necessarily those with a physical disability.

by Bruno Kahne
05/22/2008

A strategy+business exclusive

NB: Bruno Kahne is senior consultant at AirBusiness Academy, a training and research consultancy in Blagnac, France, serving the aeronautical industry.

Are you planning to bring in some Consultants, hire Insultants instead !

Before hiring the next big consultant, think again. You may perhaps be in need of an insultant. That’s what Keith R. Mcfarland says in his book “The Breakthrough Company: How Everyday Companies Become Extraordinary Performers”.

Frequently, leaders are the last to know. The company needs people who not only have ability to see through but guts to communicate to the top, even if it is unpalatable. McFarland calls these straight-shooters insultants (inside consultants). He describes them as those people “willing to ask the tough questions that cause a company to think critically about its fundamental assumptions. The value of insultants is that they will go to great lengths to get their companies to reevaluate a position or adapt to a changing environment.”

Insulants can be a company’s insurance against the common twin traps of myopia and inertia, advises McFarland, citing a research by MIT Sloan Business School. “Myopic executives tend to focus more on fighting fires and tackling time-bound projects, and forget to watch for tectonic changes reshaping the industry. Similarly, executives suffering from inertia fail to take advantage of new opportunities, choosing instead to stand pat in familiar markets.”

People normally assume that the person in authority is likely to have more information or clearer perspective, says McFarland. The assumption, alas, is often incorrect. If an organisation doesn’t have a strong insultant culture, errors are likely to be propagated throughout the company, cautions McFarland.

Customers and employees who leave the company can be a valuable source of insultant insight, finds McFarland. “These people are natural insultants. They have little reason not to tell you the truth. They may, in fact, tell you things you might have been reluctant to consider otherwise.”

McFarland offers tips to potential insultants. They should never think of charging like a bull in china shop and must always remember that they are simply trying to make the leader successful, not trying to put the spotlight on themselves. Good insultants must learn to be:

• Empathetic. Yours isn’t the only point of view. Understand where others are coming from.
• Don’t Attack. Finger pointing is not acceptable. “The most powerful tool in the insultant’s arsenal is the question and knowing how to ask the right question at the right time.”
• Don’t Triangulate. “Most people find talking behind someone’s back to be insulting, so effective insultants avoid it at all costs.”
• Don’t Kid Yourself, Your Real Motivation Will Be Obvious. “If you mean to embarrass, demean, or criticize another person, while you might succeed in that goal, you will have unnecessarily sacrificed any opportunity you had to contribute change.”
• Be a Grown-Up. “An insultant’s job is to make sure an issue gets a thorough vetting, not to convince everyone to see the world his or her way.”
• Be Assertive and Persistent. “Not everyone will be receptive to the hard truth, so an insultant must be both assertive and persistent, returning to the issue as often as he or she thinks is necessary to get the point across.”

The top leadership needs to understand, as a leader, you gain nothing by not knowing what people are thinking. People who are challenging your way of doing things with some other ideas are not necessarily being insubordinate. They are practicing leadership, which is now and will be a great company asset tomorrow.

Why should I increase my productivity?

This is a good question to think at all ages, especially when you are on the right side of life's bell-curve. What will I do with the time and effort I may have saved by becoming more productive or organized? Do I “spend these savings” and, if I do, what do I buy with them? There are many options:

1. I can go on working just as much, or more, and increase my monetary earnings. I will then have more cash, but still less time to enjoy it: the typical position of most “cash-rich and time-poor” people today.
2. I can keep my output (and probably my earnings) at the same level and devote the extra time to something else, whether that’s pleasure, voluntary societal activities, family time, or simply hanging out and enjoying life.
3. I can “bank” my extra time by investing it in learning and health, which will certainly bring me future “interest” in more learnings, yearnings and earnings, and ofcourse contribution and enjoyment.

I believe spending personal productivity gains on life's wrong “purchases” is foolish. Without any trace of hesitation I will settle for no. 3.

Seven Obstacles in Talent Management

There is a global war for talent and companies are facing a demographic landscape dominated by looming retirement of baby boomers in the developed world. Thus, talent creation, nurture and management has emerged the single most discriminator for corporations not only for growth but very survival as well. McKinsey highlights the following seven main obstacles in talent management (Business Today, 23rd March 2008):

1. Senior managers don’t spend enough-quality time on talent management.
2. Organization is ‘siloed’ and does not encourage constructive collaboration and sharing of knowledge resources.
3. Line managers are not sufficiently committed to development of people’s capabilities and careers.
4. Line managers are unwilling to differentiate their people as top-, average- and under- performers.
5. Line managers do not address under-performance effectively, even when chronic.
6. Senior leaders don’t align talent management strategy with business strategy.
7. CEOs, senior leaders are not sufficiently involved in shaping talent-management strategy.

Evolving into a CEO

The simple but insightful article published in BusinessLine on 3rd March, 2008 by V. K. Madhav Mohan is reproduced below.

Every young manager aspires to become a CEO, but sadly only a few make it. The top of the pyramid is unforgivingly narrow! The road to the top is long and hard and very, very slippery. Traversing this tortuous path calls for steely determination, hard work and a host of other attributes. You don’t wave a magic wand, say abracadabra and become a CEO: you have to evolve into a CEO.

Evolution by definition is long term. Myriad experiences over many, many years help you assimilate and synthesize learning, attitude and skill into excellence and leadership. Along the way you are bound to suffer setbacks and distractions. That’s when you learn to be mentally tough and remain positive.

So how do you evolve into a CEO?

First, ensure that you learn the intricacies of every aspect of management and business, not just your specialty. The CEO must have a solid grasp of all functional areas apart from a thorough understanding of the dynamics of the external environment. So, right from the beginning of your career you must consciously create a career path that rotates you through marketing, sales, finance, manufacturing, HR and technology. Else, you’ll arrive at the doorstep of the CEO’s office without the requisite managerial bandwidth. And then it’ll be too late!

Second, build and nourish relationships not only within your organization but also outside. Relationships are long term and need huge investments in time, effort and care. You have to give without worrying about what you get! That guarantees an infinite lifetime ROI from relationships. Relationships create strong networks that are preconditions for success in the 21st century.

Third, get your work-life balance right. Commit to fitness (mental and physical) by making time for exercise, entertainment and meditation. The higher you go, the more stress you’ll encounter. Therefore you’ll need to build your capacity to deflect and dissipate stress. And that you can do very effectively by staying light and nimble through exercise and meditation.

Fourth, commit to lifelong learning. It’s important to understand that your ability to learn, like your ability to listen, atrophies with disuse. If you learn continuously you retain your mental sharpness and memory well into the eighties and you can even ward off Alzheimer’s disease and senile dementia. In any case, Moore’s Law (chip level computing capability doubles every 18 months) has ensured that the rate of obsolescence of knowledge is exponential. So, much of your stock of old knowledge is being rendered obsolete in real-time. Learning is therefore a survival imperative!

Fifth, prevent your ego from interfering with your decisions. Learn to minimize the impact of your own likes and dislikes and maximize the welfare of your organization and your team. Eliminate the tendency to talk about yourself and hog the credit; instead, let your results do the talking.

View the whole picture:
In every situation, learn to unravel intertwined issues and then view the whole picture. When you have trained yourself like this for a long time, top-quality decision-making will come naturally to you.

And above all, maintain an iron clad commitment to personal integrity. The combination of personal integrity with consistent delivery of results is simply unbeatable because your credibility can then be universally accepted. Remember that a lot of the time it’s not what is being said that’s important; it’s who is saying it that’s paramount. As a CEO this kind of credibility is the foundation of your success. If you evolve along these lines, you can open the door with confidence when the opportunity to become CEO knocks.

For more readings on related articles, click http://thelonelyceo.blogspot.com/

Poles Apart

1. Polar Opposites: The Arctic region is essentially a frozen ocean surrounded by land. Conversely, Antarctica is a continent-with mountain ranges and lakes-surrounded by an ocean. Socially and politically, though, the Arctic region includes the northern territories of Canada, Greenland (a territory of Denmark), Russia, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the United States.
2. Most Ice: The southernmost continent has roughly 90 percent of the world's ice, which amounts to nearly three quarters of the Earth's fresh water being locked away there. This has led some to float the idea of towing icebergs to quench dry, drought-stricken areas. In fact, Prince Mohammed al Faisal of Saudi Arabia once considered a plan to find a 100 million-ton iceberg off Antarctica and tow it to the Arabian peninsula.
3. No-Man's Land: Despite symbolic images of past explorers triumphantly planting flags at the South Pole, the continent remains the only place on Earth not owned by anyone. It has no history of native peoples and is governed by the Antarctic treaty, which maintains that the land and resources be used for peaceful and scientific purposes. This is in stark contrast to the more than 4 million people living within the Arctic circle in several small towns as well as major cities such as Barrow, Alaska; Tromso, Norway; and Muramansk and Salekhaard in Russia.
4. Black Gold: Energy-hungry nations are forging northward as an estimated one quarter of all untapped oil reserves lie north of the Arctic circle, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Russia has taken the bold step of laying claim to a large swath of the Arctic region in hopes of exploring gas deposits in the Lomonosov Ridge-a 1,200-mile underwater mountain range purported to hold up to 10 billion tons of the coveted resource. Even the U.S. is getting involved, sending an icebreaker ship to map out their Arctic territory off Alaska. While it is believed by some that deposits of petroleum exist in the southern continental shelf, such as the area under the Ross Sea, the Antarctic Treaty makes oil drilling momentarily off-limits.
5. Penguins and Polar Bears: Christmas cards and Coke commercials can be blamed for the misconception that polar bears and penguins live in the same frigid neighborhood. If penguins of the Antarctic and Artic-dwelling polar bears ever did cross the same frozen paths, the waddling birds would make for very easy prey for the giant bears. But since penguins needn't worry about land predators, they have adapted their wings into paddle-like flippers to maneuver through the ocean.
6. Santa Claus' Address: Every Christmas, thousands of letters mailed to Santa Claus do make it to the North Pole... North Pole, Alaska that is. The small town of roughly 1,778 people advertises its ZIP code as the ZIP code of Santa. The Holiday spirit is felt year-round as candy-cane striped street lights keep things moving along festive places such as St. Nicholas Drive, Snowman Lane and Kris Kringle Drive.
7. Battle of the Brrr: The Antarctic is so cold that the snow never melts in many areas of the continent. The region's average temperature is about -56 degrees Fahrenheit (-49 degrees Celsius), making it the coldest climate on earth. In contrast, the Arctic's average winter temperature is -29 degrees Fahrenheit (-34 degrees Celsius), but it gets warmer in the summer. The lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth was -128 degrees Fahrenheit (-89.6 degrees Celsius), recorded July 21, 1983, at the Vostok Station located near the South Geomagnetic Pole.
8. The Ozone Hole: While the Antarctic has an ozone hole that has grown to about three times the size of the United States' land mass, the Arctic is losing ozone coverage as well. In truth, there is no actual hole; the "hole" is a region of severely depleted ozone, a chemical that helps protect the planet from harmful solar radiation. Ozone losses in the Northern Hemisphere are lower than in the Southern because warmer Arctic temperatures limit the formation of polar stratospheric clouds that destroy ozone. But temperatures in the stratosphere, high above the Arctic, have gradually cooled over the last decade, resulting in increased ozone loss.
9. Cracks in the Ice: Being primarily a thin layer of ice, the arctic is very sensitive to changing climate conditions. Warmer temperatures during the summer months cause the 12 to 15 feet thick ice sheet to melt and break apart. Last year, researchers reported for the first time that cracks in the ice had reached all the way to the North Pole.
10. Meltdown: The Arctic has a normal melting cycle in which about half of the ice pack disappears in the summer, only to grow back to the size of the United States during the winter. Still, an alarming recent study determined that the 2-mile-thick ice sheet in Greenland is melting so rapidly that half of it could be gone by the end of the century. Other studies have found that the entire Arctic could be ice-free during summer in a few decades. Lately, research has also found that the Antarctic is also losing ice, which if all melted (no one expects this to happen anytime soon), would cause sea levels to rise roughly 200 feet.

For the original article, visit:

http://www.livescience.com/environment/top10_polar_differences-1.html

Proof of God in Five Emails

Quest to comprehend or try to understand God, the Creator, must have started with origin of Intelligence both on planet earth or any where in the cosmos. I think the logical way to understand the Creator is through understanding His myriad creations and the rules He has created for the cosmos to operate. I am lucky to have a profession in Earth Science which helps me to appreciate, if not understand, the complexities of Nature i.e. God. The following is the transcript of Five Emails I received from Perry Marshall in five installments for five days during the last week of 2007 under the heading “Where did the Universe come from?” Oh! what a way to end a year and start a new. If you wish to receive those five mails in your mail box, go to http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/

Day 1: Einstein's Big Blunder

100 years ago this year, Albert Einstein published three papers that rocked the world. These papers proved the existence of the atom, introduced the theory of relativity, and described quantum mechanics. Pretty good debut for a 26 year old scientist, huh? His equations for relativity indicated that the universe was expanding. This bothered him, because if it was expanding, it must have had a beginning and a beginner. Since neither of these appealed to him, Einstein introduced a 'fudge factor' that ensured a 'steady state' universe, one that had no beginning or end.

But in 1929, Edwin Hubble showed that the furthest galaxies were fleeing away from each other, just as the Big Bang model predicted. So in 1931, Einstein embraced what would later be known as the Big Bang theory, saying, "This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened." He referred to the 'fudge factor' to achieve a steady-state universe as the biggest blunder of his career. As I'll explain during the next couple of days, Einstein's theories have been thoroughly proved and verified by experiments and measurements. But there's an even more important implication of Einstein's discovery. Not only does the universe have a beginning, but time itself, our own dimension of cause and effect, began with the Big Bang.

That's right -- time itself does not exist before then. The very line of time begins with that creation event. Matter, energy, time and space were created in an instant by an intelligence outside of space and time. About this intelligence, Albert Einstein wrote in his book "The World As I See It" that the harmony of natural law "Reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection." He went on to write, "Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe--a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble." Pretty significant statement, wouldn't you say? Stay tuned for tomorrow's installment.

Day 2: Bird Droppings on my Telescope

The Big Bang theory was totally rejected at first. But those who supported it had predicted that the ignition of the Big Bang would have left behind a sort of 'hot flash' of radiation. If a big black wood stove produces heat that you can feel, then in a similar manner, the Big Bang should produce its own kind of heat that would echo throughout the universe.

In 1965, without looking for it, two physicists at Bell Labs in New Jersey found it. At first, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were bothered because, while trying to refine the world's most sensitive radio antenna, they couldn't eliminate a bothersome source of noise. They picked up this noise everywhere they pointed the antenna. At first they thought it was bird droppings. The antenna was so sensitive it could pick up the heat of bird droppings (which certainly are warm when they're brand new) but even after cleaning it off, they still picked up this noise. This noise had actually been predicted in detail by other astronomers, and after a year of checking and re-checking the data, they arrived at a conclusion: This crazy Big Bang theory really was correct.

In an interview, Penzias was asked why there was so much resistance to the Big Bang theory. He said, "Most physicists would rather attempt to describe the universe in ways which require no explanation. And since science can't *explain* anything - it can only*describe* things - that's perfectly sensible. If you have a universe which has always been there, you don't explain it, right? "Somebody asks you, 'How come all the secretaries in your company are women?' You can say, 'Well, it's always been that way.' That's a way of not having to explain it. So in the same way, theories which don't require explanation tend to be the ones accepted by science, which is perfectly acceptable and the best way to make science work."

But on the older theory that the universe was eternal, he explains: "It turned out to be so ugly that people dismissed it. What we find - the simplest theory - is a creation out of nothing, the appearance out of nothing of the universe." Penzias and his partner, Robert Wilson, won the Nobel Prize for their discovery of this radiation. The Big Bang theory is now one of the most thoroughly validated theories in all of science. Robert Wilson was asked by journalist Fred Heeren if the Big Bang indicated a creator. Wilson said, "Certainly there was something that set it all off. Certainly, if you are religious, I can't think of a better theory of the origin of the universe to match with Genesis." Stay tuned for tomorrow's installment.

Day 3: Why the Big Bang was the most precisely planned event in all of history?

In your kitchen cabinet, you've probably got a spray bottle with an adjustable nozzle. If you twist the nozzle one way, it sprays a fine mist into the air. You twist the nozzle the other way, it squirts a jet of water in a straight line. You turn that nozzle to the exact position you want, so you can wash a mirror, clean up a spill, or whatever.

If the universe had expanded a little faster, the matter would have sprayed out into space like fine mist from a water bottle - so fast that a gazillion particles of dust would speed into infinity and never even form a single star. If the universe had expanded just a little slower, the material would have dribbled out like big drops of water, then collapsed back where it came from by the force of gravity. A little too fast, and you get a meaningless spray of fine dust. A little too slow, and the whole universe collapses back into one big black hole. The surprising thing is just how narrow the difference is. To strike the perfect balance between too fast and too slow, the force, something that physicists call "the Dark Energy Term" had to be accurate to one part in ten with 120 zeros. If you wrote this as a decimal, the number would look like this:

0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001.

In their paper "Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant" two atheist scientists from Stanford University stated that the existence of this dark energy term "Would have required a miracle....An external agent, external to space and time, intervened in cosmic history for reasons of its own." Just for comparison, the best human engineering example is the Gravity Wave Telescope, which was built with a precision of 23 zeros. The Designer, the 'external agent' that caused our universe must possess an intellect, knowledge, creativity and power trillions and trillions of times greater than we humans have. Absolutely amazing.

Now a person who doesn't believe in God has to find some way to explain this. One of the more common explanations seems to be "There was an infinite number of universes, so it was inevitable that things would have turned out right in at least one of them. "The "infinite universes" theory is truly an amazing theory. Just think about it, if there is an infinite number of universes, then absolutely everything is not only possible...It's actually happened! It means that somewhere, in some dimension, there is a universe where the Chicago Cubs won the World Series last year. There's a universe where Jimmy Hoffa doesn't get cement shoes; instead he marries Joan Rivers and becomes President of the United States. There's even a universe where Elvis kicks his drug habit and still resides at Graceland and sings at concerts. Imagine the possibilities! I might sound like I'm joking, but actually I'm dead serious. To believe an infinite number of universes made life possible by random chance is to believe everythingelse I just said, too. Some people believe in God with a capital G. And some folks believe in Chance with a Capital C. Tomorrow's installment: "If you can read this email, I can prove to you that God exists." Sound a little bold? Tune in tomorrow - same time, same station.

Day 4: If you can read this sentence, I can prove to you that God exists

See this email I just sent you, that you're reading right now? This email is proof of the existence of God. Yeah, I know, that sounds crazy. But I'm not asking you to believe anything just yet, until you see the evidence for yourself. All I ask is that you refrain from disbelieving while I show you my proof. It only takes a minute to convey, but it speaks to one of the most important questions of all time.

So how is this email proof of the existence of God?: This email you're reading contains letters, words and sentences. It contains a message that means something. As long as you can read English, you can understand what I'm saying. You can do all kinds of things with this email. You can read it on your computer screen. You can print it out on your printer. You can read it out loud to a friend who's in the same room as you are. You can call your friend and read it to her over the telephone. You can save it as a Microsoft WORD document. You can forward it to someone via email, or you can post it on a website.

Regardless of how you copy it or where you send it, the information remains the same. My email contains a message. It contains information in the form of language. The message is independent of the medium it is sent in. Messages are not matter, even though they can be carried by matter (like printing this email on a piece of paper). Messages are not energy even though they can be carried by energy (like the sound of my voice.) Messages are immaterial. Information is itself a unique kind of entity. It can be stored and transmitted and copied in many forms, but the meaning still stays the same. Messages can be in English, French or Chinese. Or Morse Code. Or mating calls of birds. Or the Internet. Or radio or television. Or computer programs or architect blueprints or stone carvings. Every cell in your body contains a message encoded in DNA, representing a complete plan for you. OK, so what does this have to do with God?

It's very simple. Messages, languages, and coded information ONLY come from a mind. A mind that agrees on an alphabet and a meaning of words and sentences. A mind that expresses both desire and intent. Whether I use the simplest possible explanation, such as the one I'm giving you here, or if we analyze language with advanced mathematics and engineering communication theory, we can say this with total confidence: "Messages, languages and coded information never, ever come from anything else besides a mind. No one has ever produced a single example of a message that did not come from a mind." Nature can create fascinating patterns - snow flakes, sand dunes, crystals, stalagmites and stalactites. Tornados and turbulence and cloud formations. But non-living things cannot create language. They*cannot* create codes. Rocks cannot think and they cannot talk. And they cannot create information.

It is believed by some that life on planet earth arose accidentally from the "primordial soup," the early ocean which produced enzymes and eventually RNA, DNA, and primitive cells. But there is still a problem with this theory: It fails to answer the question, 'Where did the information come from?' DNA is not merely a molecule. Nor is it simply a "pattern."Yes, it contains chemicals and proteins, but those chemicals are arranged to form an intricate language, in the exact same way that English and Chinese and HTML are languages. DNA has a four-letter alphabet, and structures very similar to words, sentences and paragraphs. With very precise instructions and systems that check for errors and correct them.

To the person who says that life arose naturally, you need only ask: "Where did the information come from? Show me just ONE example of a language that didn't come from a mind." As simple as this question is, I've personally presented it in public presentations and Internet discussion forums for more than two years. I've addressed more than fifty thousand people, including hostile, skeptical audiences who insist that life arose without the assistance of God. But to a person, none of them have ever been able to explain where the information came from. This riddle is "So simple any child can understand; so complex, no atheist can solve." You can hear or read my full presentation on this topic at http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/ifyoucanreadthis.htm For a high-school level, layman's version, go here: http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/information.htm

Matter and energy have to come from somewhere. Everyone can agree on that. But information has to come from somewhere, too! Information is separate entity, fully on par with matter and energy. And information can only come from a mind. If books and poems and TV shows come from human intelligence, then all living things inevitably came from a super intelligence. Every word you hear, every sentence you speak, every dog that barks, every song you sing, every email you read, every packet of information that zings across the Internet, is proof of the existence of God. Because information and language always originate in a mind. In the beginning were words and language. In the Beginning was Information. When we consider the mystery of life - where it came from and how this miracle is possible - do we not at the same time ask the question where it is going, and what its purpose is?

Day 5: Where Did the Universe Come From?

Today I introduce to you one of the most powerful science presentations I have ever heard. I listened to Hugh Ross give this presentation on a tape while I was driving down Interstate 88 in Chicago one night. As I listened, light bulbs were firing off in my head all over the place. So what's the big deal about this? Here's what you'll discover as you listen:

• The delicate balance of vast forces in the universe, necessary for life to exist
• Why planet earth is so extremely special in its ability to support life
• The very measurement of the entire universe in all its magnificence, made possible only within the last 15 years
• A fascinating place where science and theology come together in perfect agreement

Now there's one more thing I want to tell you about this talk: It was recorded in 1994. Now why would I give you something called "New Scientific Evidence" if it's 11 years old? Here's why: Because unlike most things 11 years old--with only a couple of exceptions, the information Hugh Ross shares here has been shown to be even *more* accurate today than it was back then. One of the hallmarks of a successful scientific model is that it holds up for years and even decades, even while scholars debate it. I've been following Dr. Ross and his work, and virtually every fact he discusses here has been further strengthened and validated by all the physics and astronomy discoveries in the years since.

On this link you'll find both the audio recording and the printed transcript. You can read it online, print it out, listen on your computer, burn it to a CD, or download this to your MP3 player. Go here now: http://www.CosmicFingerprints.com/audio/newevidence.htm . Enjoy.

Perry Marshall

Nature vs. Nurture in the Cosmos by Jeanna Bryner

I have always believed the ‘fractal nature’ of Nature i.e. Self-Repeating Properties of Nature in different scales. Thus, it was interesting to go through this simple article published in www.space.com. The article reports recent findings of different aging-stages of galaxies vis-à-vis their productivity like human beings and other life species.

The discovery of "teenage" galaxies is giving scientists a better handle on how galaxies transform from sexy, spiral star factories to shapeless retirement homes for old stars. In the early 1900s Edwin Hubble discovered that the Milky Way galaxy is not alone. Our galaxy is just one of many "island universes," as Hubble dubbed them, swimming in the vast sea of space. Now that astronomers can measure the age of each galaxy, its star-making activity and other related data, they are piecing together an understanding that galaxies grow gradually like children, gliding through their visibly different teen years before reaching adulthood.

Results published in December, 2007 issue of the Astrophysical Journal provide the strongest evidence yet for this thinking, called nurture theory, in which the elegant spirals (young galaxies) and blob-like ellipticals (old galaxies) are evolutionarily linked.

Gerontology through Color Coding:
Scientists have long thought that young galaxies grow up into old ones, referred to as blue and red galaxies, respectively. The color indicates how actively the galaxy is churning out new stars. Younger stars shine in ultraviolet or blue light, and so galaxies bustling with star-making activity appear blue. Older stars emit infrared or red light. In aging galaxies, their "stellar reproductive" capacity has begun to shut down and so the remaining stars are just hanging out for the remainder of their lives.
About half of all galaxies are blue and half are red. It had been postulated that the two are linked, with the blue young ones running out of star-making material and maturing into passive red galaxies.

If this theory holds true, you'd expect to see a population of "teenage" galaxies in the process of transitioning from young to old. Finding these teens is tricky though, because the cosmic change occurs over billions of years. "The nurture theory of galaxy evolution predicted that there would be galaxies in transition," said lead author Christopher Martin, principal investigator for NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) mission at Caltech in California. "Finding these galaxies required ultraviolet light, because they really stand out at this wavelength."

Cosmic History:
Data from GALEX, launched in 2003, allowed Martin and his colleagues to observe galaxies in ultraviolet light across 10 billion years of cosmic history. The researchers' analysis of tens of thousands of images taken by GALEX has revealed that young, spiral galaxies do in fact first mature into "teens" before winding down into their elderly ellipses. The details of the picture now emerging suggest that a spiral galaxy might merge with another spiral or perhaps an irregularly shaped galaxy before churning out a few bursts of newly minted stars. Eventually, the galaxy begins to exhaust its star production and settles into later life as an elliptical.

"Our data confirm that all galaxies begin life forming stars," Martin said. "Then through a combination of mergers, fuel exhaustion and perhaps suppression by black holes, the galaxies eventually stop producing stars." The findings also suggest that some young galaxies walk into old age quickly, while others leisurely stroll into their golden years.

For the original article, click:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/071119-mm-galaxy-growth.html

What Drives Evolution?

During the last 31 years of my geoscience association - five years of geoscience education during 1976-81 and the rest as a professional petroleum geologist - I distinctingly remember asking all Palaeontologists, I have met, this simple question “What drives evolution?” Or to put it in a different format “Why evolution goes only in a forward direction (parellel to time-axis) i.e. from simple to complex forms, not in the reverse direction?”. I still brood over this question and was very happy to see two articles published in www.livescience.com. The article by Jeanna Bryner with some editing is reproduced below.

From bizarre butterfly spots to rainbow-colored lizards to adaptations that allow squirrels and even snakes to "fly," physical innovations in the natural world can be mind-boggling. Natural selection is accepted by scientists as the main engine driving the array of organisms and their complex features. But is evolution via natural selection the only explanation for complex organisms? "I think one of the greatest mysteries in biology at the moment is whether natural selection is the only process capable of generating organismal complexity," said Massimo Pigliucci of the Department of Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook University in New York, "or whether there are other properties of matter that also come into play. I suspect the latter will turn out to be true."

Forces of Evolution:
The developing research area on how the vast biodiversity on Earth evolves accepts natural selection and three other established forces of evolution as its basis. These include: mutation, random genetic drift and gene flow.

• Natural selection is the process by which the best-adapted individuals produce the most offspring, which in turn carry forward to their offspring the genes that gave their parents the upper edge.
• Genetic drift is a random process in which chance plays a role in deciding which gene variants (alleles) survive.
• Gene flow occurs when genes are carried from one population to another. Also called migration, an example of gene is when pollen gets blown to a region where it previously did not exist, transporting new genetic material to that population.
• Mutations are also random. Changes to an organism's DNA can impact all aspects of its life, from how it looks and behaves to its basic physiology.

Flexible Genes:
Some scientists are proposing additions to the above list of evolutionary forces.
"Over the past decade or two, scientists have begun to suspect that there are other properties of complex systems (such as living organisms) that may help, together with natural selection, explain how things such as eyes, bacterial flagella, wings and turtle shells evolve," Pigliucci told LiveScience.

One idea is that organisms are equipped with the flexibility to change their physical or other features during development to accommodate environmental changes, a phenomenon called phenotypic plasticity. The change typically doesn't show up in the genes. For instance, in social bees, both the workers and guards have the same genomes but different genes get activated to give them distinct behaviors and appearances. Environmental factors, such as temperature and embryonic diet, prompt genetic activity that ends up casting one bee a worker and the other a guard. If beneficial, this flexibility could be passed on to offspring and so can lead to the evolution of new features in a species. "This plasticity is heritable, and natural selection can favor different kinds of plasticity, depending on the range of environmental conditions the organism encounters," Pigliucci said.

Made to Order:
Self-organization is another evolutionary force that some experts say whips up complex features or behaviors spontaneously in living and non-living matter, and these traits are passed on to offspring through the generations. "A classic example outside of biology are hurricanes: These are not random air movements at all, but highly organized atmospheric structures that arise spontaneously given the appropriate environmental conditions," Pigliucci said. "There is increasing evidence that living organisms generate some of their complexity during development in an analogous manner."

A biological illustration of self-organization is protein-folding. A lengthy necklace of amino acids bends, twists and folds into a three-dimensional protein, whose shape determines the protein's function. A protein made up of just 100 amino acids could take on an endless number (billions upon billions) of shapes. While this shape-shifting takes on the order of seconds to minutes in nature, the fastest computers don't have the muscle yet to pull off the feat. The mechanism that triggers the final form could be a chemical signal, for instance.

Novelties in Nature:
The environment also could drive changes in an animal's appearance or phenotype, a phenomenon that intrigues many biologists. For instance, Sean Carroll, a molecular biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, discovered butterflies in East Africa have different colorings depending on when they hatch. Those hatching during the wet season emerge with brightly colored eyespots while their dry-season relatives wear neutral cryptic coats.

Biology has a pretty good understanding of how animals develop from a fertilized egg to a fully formed organism. "We just don't understand how ... the environment and [the] genetic blueprint interact during development," said Theunis Piersma of the Center for Ecological and Evolutionary Studies at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Piersma's research on shorebirds called red knots has revealed the birds can morph their phenotypes depending on their migration routes. When brought into captivity and placed in colder temperature environments, the shorebirds' flight muscles and organs shrink to reduce heat loss. The birds pass on to offspring the capacity to make these changes.

So the mystery is starting to clear around how diverse species with an array of features evolve. The field, which had relied in the past mostly on fossil records, got a boost with the development of genetic techniques and the integration of diverse sectors of science, connecting genetics, biology, ecology and computer science.

While scientists are shedding light on natural mechanisms that work to shape species, many questions in the field are brewing on the lab-bench. And the original question examined by Charles Darwin - what is the mechanism that causes new species to evolve - has yet to be fully explained. And another related question looms: How important are chance events, as opposed to natural selection, to shaping organisms?

For the original article, click the link below:

http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/070816_gm_evolution.html

Where is the Rest of the Universe?

The following article by Dave Mosher is available at

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070820_mm_dark_forces.html

Scientists trying to create a detailed inventory of all the matter and energy in the cosmos run into a curious problem--the vast majority of it is missing. "I call it the dark side of the universe," said Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago, referring to the great mysteries of dark matter and dark energy. In fact, only 4 percent of the matter and energy in the universe has been found. The other 96 percent remains elusive, but scientists are looking in the farthest reaches of space and deepest depths of Earth to solve the two dark riddles.

Missing Matter:
Einstein's famous equation "E=mc^2" describes energy and matter (or mass) as one and the same and maps of the cosmos refer to the energy-matter combination as energy density, for short. The problem with detecting dark matter, thought to make up 22 percent of the universe's mass/energy pie, is that light doesn't interact with it. But it does exhibit the tug of gravity.

Initial evidence for the mysterious matter was discovered 75 years ago when astrophysicists noticed an anomaly in a jumble of galaxies: The galactic cluster had hundreds of times more gravitational pull than it should have, far outweighing its visible mass of stars.

"We can predict the motions of the sun and planets very accurately, but when we measure distant things we see anomalies," said Scott Dodelson, an astrophysicist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois. "Dark matter is currently the best possible solution, even though we've never seen any of it."

Another hallmark of dark matter is gravitational lensing, similar to the effect of light passing through a piece of polished glass. Massive objects like the sun can bend light, but colossal clouds of dark matter create "bubbles" in the cosmos that magnify, distort and duplicate the light of galaxies or stars behind them.

Particle Hunt:
In spite of the ghostly evidence, pieces of dark matter have yet to be pinned down by researchers. "Until we actually discover particles, we're not home yet," Dodelson said. Particle physicists have detected neutrinos, which are extremely lightweight particles that pour out of the sun and hardly interact into ordinary matter, but Turner said they make up an extremely small fraction of dark matter in the universe. "We arrested one of the members of the gang, but not the leader of the gang," Turner said of neutrinos. He thinks the leader is actually a WIMP (Weakly Interactive Massive Particle). Unfortunately, WIMPS are just a theory so far.

The thinking goes that WIMPs are very heavy, yet like neutrinos they rarely bump into matter to produce a detectable signal. But the idea that WIMPS--such as theoretical axion or neutralino particles--can bump into visible matter at all gives scientists hope. "This is a story that may soon be at its end," Turner said, noting that the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search in the Soudan mine of Minnesota and other experiments below the ground should be sensitive enough to detect a WIMP.

The Anti-Gravity:
Perhaps the biggest mystery of all is dark matter's big cousin, dark energy. The invisible force is thought to be a large-scale "anti-gravity," pushing apart galactic clusters and causing the unexplainable, accelerating expansion of the universe. Turner thinks dark energy is the biggest mystery of them all--and quite literally, since physicists predict that it makes up 74 percent of energy density in the universe.

"So far, the greatest achievement with dark energy is giving it a name," Turner said of the elusive force. "We are really at the very beginning of this puzzle." Turner described dark energy as "really weird stuff," best thought of as an elastic, repulsive gravity that can't be broken down into particles. "We know what it does, but we don't know what it is," Turner said.

While astrophysicists look deep into space to gather more details about dark energy's effects, Turner noted that theoretical physicists are focusing on explaining how the force actually works. And at this point, he joked, any physicist's explanation for dark energy is probably good enough to consider. "We're at this very early stage, at the crime scene of dark energy's existence, if you will," Turner said. "It's a highly creative period, and now is the time for ideas."